T-Mobile Returns To Unlimited Data Plans

New submitter kevmeister writes "Today T-Mobile decided that unlimited data plans are a good thing after all. Over a year after discontinuation, T-Mobile announced that unlimited data is coming back. 'T-Mobile said the new unlimited data plan will cost $20 a month when added to a Value voice and text plan, and $30 a month when added to a Classic voice and text plan. ... Among its top U.S. network counterparts, only Sprint offers a similar deal, and it costs about $110 a month. But Sprint offers the iPhone; T-Mobile does not. One of the new T-Mobile plan's flaws, though, is that it cannot be used for tethering -- that is, connecting multiple devices to the Internet. MetroPCS, considered the fifth-largest carrier in the U.S., made a big announcement of its own Tuesday, saying it would begin offering an unlimited everything promotional plan for $55 a month for a limited time.'"

Comments

"The flaw" not really much of a flaw

[Mitsoid]

" One of the new T-Mobile plan's flaws, though, is that it cannot be used for tethering "

Verizon & AT&T do not either.. not a huge flaw there as T-Mobile gets a one-up on their higher market share competitors.. on top of being GSM like AT&T, you get a bit more phone freedom (minus the #g band differences, which seem to be more of a moot point nowadays anyways for international travelers... since 3g band frequencies change by country)

Re:"The flaw" not really much of a flaw

[calmofthestorm]

If they're using browser agent detection it sounds like a blacklist rather than a whitelist.

Any idea if this could be bypassed by SSH tunneling all your computer traffic to a computer on the other side? It would still be distinguishable from traffic that originated from your phone by looking at the TTL, but I doubt many people do this.

Re:"The flaw" not really much of a flaw

[Pieroxy]

Funny, in France I'm paying 16€/month for unlimited calls to over 200 countries, unlimited SMS and unlimited data with tethering thrown in. The only downside is a cap at 3GB after which they will throttle your traffic. Remember this is a "personal plan" so "unlimited SMS" means no more than 1000 to less than 250 different recipients per month. About the same for phone calls which is about 100x more than my maximum I think.

Something is badly rotten on the other side of the pond. I still wonder what. The only thing I can think of is that back in the days the consumer calling a cell was the one being charged with the full price of the communication. In the US, the dude answering his cell is still charged. This made owning a cell phone much cheaper over here and the cell phone market penetration was much much better on our land.

Re:"The flaw" not really much of a flaw

[wierd_w]

You can't buy naked SIMs in the US.

What you CAN do is buy a cheap GSM bar style phone from just about any walmart, and dump the phone and keep the sim.

Assuming you handset is not carrier locked, you can then use the cheap prepaid sim.

I used to do this the other way around when my phones would get damaged before their scheduled replacement, and limp on a bar phone until I could upgrade by putting my contract sim in the cheap feature phone.

Just drop the phone in any cellphone recycling bin, I believe most walmarts have them now, and keep the sim.

The price is quite affordable. No contest, it is wasteful, but the cell carriers do not want to sell us naked prepaid sims.

Re:"The flaw" not really much of a flaw

[fliptout]

You can buy the SIMs alone, but you need to go to an actual T-Mobile/ATT/carrier store, in my experience. You might be able to do it through the carrier website too.

The thing I have a problem with is that they will collect all your personal information to activate the disposable SIM, unlike anywhere else in the world.

Re:"The flaw" not really much of a flaw

[Mitreya]

The thing I have a problem with is that they will collect all your personal information to activate the disposable SIM

You can buy a naked SIM in T-Mobile store -- I have done so several times. They do not really collect your information (they do ask for a name and for a birthday, but told me that this is for phone-support authentication. they don't verify with ID or anything.).
You certainly do not have to provide them with an address.

T-Mobile DATA plan?

[damn_registrars]

I'm a T-Mobile customer and I'd be happy if I could just get voice service from them at my house. I drop calls all the time and they always claim to be "working" on the problem. I would drop them entirely but I'm expecting to move from my current location to another location hundreds - if not thousands - of miles away fairly soon and don't want a new contract until I get there and know which company's coverage is the best there.

I can certainly tell you though that I would not sign up for a data plan with T-Mobile, at least not where I currently live. That would be a tremendous waste of money.

Re:T-Mobile DATA plan?

[Burning1]

I'm also a T-Mobile customer, and I live in the Bay Area. Voice / Text / Data isn't really an issue here. I recently switched from Verizon, because I could get a monthly plan with unlimited data for $50, rather than paying $85/mo for Verizon.

If you live in rural America, Verizon is one of the better choices. I grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains and owned my first cell phone 12 years ago. Back then, coverage was really an issue.

Since I love to go riding in rural areas, I may end up buying a Verizon Pay as You Go phone as well. $1.99 for unlimited calls on the few days I need it.

Re:T-Mobile DATA plan?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

WiFi calling is my favorite feature of T-Mobile. Be careful, there are reports that the new Samsung G3 has issues with WiFi reception.

Virgin...

[gfxguy]

I got in on Virgin Mobile's $25 unlimited (plus 300 talk minutes). Good luck finding anything like that ever again.

Subscriber losses

[Miros]

T-Mobile is having trouble retaining / gaining subscribers. I doubt this is altruistic, they need to draw more customers in so they are attempting deep discounting.

Re:Subscriber losses

[Mitreya]

T-Mobile is having trouble retaining / gaining subscribers. I doubt this is altruistic,

You'll have better luck finding a unicorn than an altruistic corporation. Still, sometimes corporations act in customer's interests.

I am surprised T-Mobile is not gaining ground because to me they have two selling points:

1. They actually throttle you (instead of CHARGING per MB) when you go over data cap. Now throttling sucks (and I haven't subscribed to data plan yet), but it sure beats being charged. I don't even know if you can get AT&T to kill your internet when you hit the cap instead automatically charging you more.

2. Little known fact - T-mobile offers unsubsidized plans at about $10 less/month. You know, when you bring your own phone and don't get a subsidized freebie? I believe every other provider (AT&T, Verizon) will happily charge you the regular monthly rate, even though you got no free phone (or got a very cheap free phone) from them.

Thank You Department of Justice

[timeOday]

This is clearly a dividend of last year's enforcement of anti-trust law against the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile:

On March 20, 2011, AT&T announced that it would purchase T-Mobile USA. On August 31, 2011, the Antitrust Division of the United States Department of Justice formally announced that it would seek to block the takeover, and filed a lawsuit to such effect in federal court. The bid was abandoned by AT&T on December 19, 2011.

Obviously the acquisition was intended to prevent exactly this sort of competitive undercutting.

Tethering limitation

[MobyDisk]

Remember this ruling that prevents Verizon from blocking tethering apps? Someone at the FCC needs to be patted on the back for forcing Network Neutrality in the original contract for Verizon's 4G spectrum. Now, if only we could force the other carriers to do the same thing.

not really unlimited?

[codeAlDente]

The analysis on market-ticker today suggests 5GB is still the approximate upper limit. http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=210521

This is easy....

[HerculesMO]

Because they have almost no LTE coverage in the US right now. So yea, you can get unlimited data, but since it's so damn slow you won't bother downloading anything on your mobile device.

I am leaving them as soon as my contract is up.... what a terrible idea that was.

Re:This is easy....

[Revotron]

T-Mobile has great "4G" coverage in my area. I live on the outskirts of the Kansas City metro area. My new T-Mobile smartphone gets 6-7Mbps downstream, while my Verizon iPhone (which I am reluctantly dropping due to Verizon's shoddy pricing plans) clocks in at 1.5Mbps. I ran these tests side-by-side and the numbers from three subsequent tests came in strongly in favor of T-Mobile. I found that particularly unacceptable on Verizon's part since their service costs easily twice as much.

Do you live out in the boondocks? In that case, I'd certainly understand why their coverage wouldn't be as strong.

Aren't they were required to allow teathering now?

[crazyjj]

One of the new T-Mobile plan's flaws, though, is that it cannot be used for tethering

Thought the FCC case recently required carriers to allow tethering, or is that just for Verizon?

Providers should be more flexible

[kawabago]

Assuming some mechanism of bandwidth rationing is necessary, I'm not convinced it is, providers should become more flexible. An unlimited data plan that has a small monthly maintenance fee of maybe $5 then a small per gigabyte charge that results in the average user paying about the same would be attractive. That way people would really only pay for what they use and get a break when they take time off. I might buy a plan like that.

Tmobile wifi calling solves this problem

[SuperBanana]

I can certainly tell you though that I would not sign up for a data plan with T-Mobile, at least not where I currently live. That would be a tremendous waste of money.

At home you have wifi, don't you?

Not only does that mean you don't really need data coverage, but you can make and receive phonecalls seamlessly via wifi calling. Myself and several other coworkers switched to tmobile specifically because wifi calling works perfectly (provided there's enough wifi signal strength) and as a result, we can make calls from our building's basement - we have wifi everywhere on campus, and as a result we have the best "cell service."

You can even set whether to prefer wifi or cellular. It just switches over automatically. If you have your phone set to keep wifi on all the time, you can receive calls without issue.

If you have signal strength issues at home, you can also purchase an amplifier/antenna pair. An antenna goes on your roof (or stuck to the inside of a window, or attached to the exterior wall), a cable goes into a central part of the house where you locate the amplifier+indoor antenna.

Re:Tmobile wifi calling solves this problem

[Bill_the_Engineer]

One caveat of WiFi calling being that T-Mobile still counts the minutes towards your allotted monthly calling plan and will bill you for any minutes over the allotment. I never gone over the allotment, but the possibility it still there.

$110 Sprint plan?

[dontbemad]

I'm confused. How much is Sprint's plan supposed to cost? Because I have an unlimited "premium" data plan on a 450 minute line and I only shell out around $85-$90 a month, after taxes and what not. I have no idea where this other 20 bucks is supposed to be coming from. $110 is around how much one would expect to pay for around a GB of data on the new shared plans with one cell phone, from what I understand.

Re:T-Mobile iPhone this fall?

[Bill_the_Engineer]

CNET Reviews CTIA 2012 T-Mobile: iPhone network compatibility coming this year

Re:Wish I could choose my own plan.

[Revotron]

Did you buy a subsidized phone and go with their classic plan?

I'm on a two-line 2-year contract with 1000 shared minutes, unlimited texting for both phones, and unlimited data for one for $70. Then again, I just got their Value plan and bought used phones from eBay, so my monthly bill is lower as a result. You should look into it - the math works out to about $200 in savings over the life of the 2-year contract.

I love my Virgin Mobile!

[SternisheFan]

Seriously, the more I read about these overpriced plans, "I thank Gawd" for my Virgin Mobile phone. $25 a month gives me 300 minutes, unlimited text/web, web throttled after 2.5 gig. I have gone over the limit a couple of times and really didn't notice a speed difference, and if I use wifi when I'm home I never go over anyway. (New PayAsYouGo customers do pay $35 per month.) VirginMobile is supposedly powered by Sprint, and Sprint is supposedly powered by Verizon. Service has been great in the N.Y. area. I hear the horror stories from friends and co-workers about their phone companies, overage charges, etc. When they ask what I have and I tell them "VM Pay as you go.", sometimes they'll sneer at the Virgin.Mobile name. Then I say, "I pay $25 a month" and just smile, like this :-)

Re:Wish I could choose my own plan.

[hierophanta]

because you make poor decisions as a consumer. tmobile currently has a monthly plan for $30 that suits your needs - 100 minutes unlimited text and web (4g up to 5gig)

Re:Too bad.

[Revotron]

Your argument of the majority of customers subsidizing the power-users is flawed. It makes the assumption that an "unlimited" plan is the only plan being offered - this is false in most cases. T-Mobile offers a capped data plan in addition to unlimited. Also, there's no way to price Unlimited plans in such a way that proportionately reflects their usage compared to tiered plans - how much should they be, infinity dollars?

Now Sprint, on the other hand, has an all-or-none unlimited data package. That seems a little absurd, and I can see how someone barely using 100MB a month would be a little peeved by having to pay full price for an unlimited plan when they could get by with much lower plans at a lower cost.